Hi from York

[Chris]

Hi all,



I'm Chris, mid 30's from York and currently i'm 'volunteering' at my brother's (Luke) kitchen showroom (read slave labour lol ) whilst i work out my notice at my day job as a Teaching Assisstant.

I'm responsible for his website, adverts and help with the visuals when i can get down there. I'm seeing out this school year then starting full time. My background is mostly IT, i was a support tech for Time computers a while back if anyone remembers them.

We went down to the Articad training a few weeks back and that really helped. I recommend it if you're sitting on the fence about going. I've seen Daz's renders on here and they're pretty amazing, hope to pick your brains and share some ideas dude. I've had a quick peak in the config files, changed a few bits to share textures between two pc's, but i'm wary of going too far on a pc that isn't mine! The Redway engine looks fun, how deep into the files can we get?

Anyway, i'm rambling. Will add a couple of renders up. First is before training, second is after.

Before: over lit, horrible windows (not my doing i promise), dark - looks like night time and everything looks flat
   

After: removed all lights from the design and used the 'learnt' settings from class. Floor still needs work
   

Still a way to go yet, I'm lacking brightness and as per the first design adding light flattens everything. I've tonightr read about not using pure colours - ie 255.255.255. which i have done as well as using 1 diffuse for some parts. Tomorrow i'll turn some of the whites down and see what that does.

I'm also torn on windows - views or no views and whether or not ticking 'external' has any effect on the visual or if its just for the fitters convenience. I tried gradients but they looked poo, tried really washed out over exposed textures on cubic boxes set back 1 metre from the window and i couldn't get that to look right either. Discussion on windows.... off we go!

Anyway, i'll start going on again if i don't stop now lol maybe this should be in the articad forum? 

Looking forward to chatting with you all

C 

[Joe Laughlin]

Hi all,



I'm Chris, mid 30's from York and currently i'm 'volunteering' at my brother's (Luke) kitchen showroom (read slave labour lol ) whilst i work out my notice at my day job as a Teaching Assisstant.

I'm responsible for his website, adverts and help with the visuals when i can get down there. I'm seeing out this school year then starting full time. My background is mostly IT, i was a support tech for Time computers a while back if anyone remembers them.

We went down to the Articad training a few weeks back and that really helped. I recommend it if you're sitting on the fence about going. I've seen Daz's renders on here and they're pretty amazing, hope to pick your brains and share some ideas dude. I've had a quick peak in the config files, changed a few bits to share textures between two pc's, but i'm wary of going too far on a pc that isn't mine! The Redway engine looks fun, how deep into the files can we get?

Anyway, i'm rambling. Will add a couple of renders up. First is before training, second is after.

Before: over lit, horrible windows (not my doing i promise), dark - looks like night time and everything looks flat


After: removed all lights from the design and used the 'learnt' settings from class. Floor still needs work


Still a way to go yet, I'm lacking brightness and as per the first design adding light flattens everything. I've tonightr read about not using pure colours - ie 255.255.255. which i have done as well as using 1 diffuse for some parts. Tomorrow i'll turn some of the whites down and see what that does.

I'm also torn on windows - views or no views and whether or not ticking 'external' has any effect on the visual or if its just for the fitters convenience. I tried gradients but they looked poo, tried really washed out over exposed textures on cubic boxes set back 1 metre from the window and i couldn't get that to look right either. Discussion on windows.... off we go!

Anyway, i'll start going on again if i don't stop now lol maybe this should be in the articad forum? 

Looking forward to chatting with you all

C

Hi Chris,

Def see the difference between the 2 renders. Daz is the man to talk to regarding lighting, got a few tips from him. With regards the windows it's personal pref! Sometimes a view can distract from a design. I normally have view ticked on and edit the brightness of the image or use a single sided face outside the window that allows the light through. I also do mostly render to file and adjust the the exposure and stuff in Photoshop. Look foward to seeing more renders.

Joe

[Jayne Hiddleston]

Hi Chris,

I am a fellow articad user, also always looking for hints and tips. Joe and Daz on here have been absolutely amazing with me and have helped me lots with design issues, articad problems etc. This forum is great for getting some assistance, especially if you are like me and the only designer in the business!

Look forward to discussing articad on-going. You will see we have a specific forum for it which is great. Your renders look fantastic already. I have also done the level 3 training and being on here has helped me develop additional skills.

Interested to learn more about your "pure colours" and how you diffuse them as I often struggle producing good renders with lighter colours often this is what Clints want nowadays. 

Anyways, look forward to chatting to you soon

[Daz Gizmo]

Yeah, welcome Chris....sorry I didn't read you post sooner.Thanks Joe & Jayne for the plug.. 

Yeah, Blacks and white extremes we should be careful of as these can break the energy preservation rules. To white (255RGB) will bounce light around to much and increase render times. To Black (0RGB) will absorb so much light. White I either reduce the diffuse factor to 0.95 if using a texture that look very white or the RGB colour to 230 to 250 value. 

In the newer build of RedSDK the material automatically forces materials into these Energy rules but I am not sure if ArtiCAD current inclusion of RedSDK has this material.

Your renders look great by the way.

With regard to interior lights and flattening the render. 
This is the combination of materials and the lights. I often do test renders with tone mapping off (using the hidden advanced setting this can be achieved) to see how bright they are and they often are really blown out and with many matt materials this causes this effect. We have to remember in reality even white matt emulsion is reflective, it's just that the reflections are very blurred which using the glossiness factor creates this effect. The downside of using this approach to materials is longer render times.

Re Windows and views.
I more often than not I now use light Appearance with view2 (and select a outdoor view and brighten it up to reduce the risk of adding to much colour of the image to the render) and sometimes a single facet graphic like Joe mentioned. The reason really is that I find it the only real way to get soft shadows. If this is not lit it can look blown out as the sky light is passing through and reflecting off the glass on the outside. Also the sky rays and sun is often never really enough like many other highend render engines adding a window panel light is often used in the likes of VRay and others. The brightness of your lit appearance is important as we are closing of the render scene environment which is used for the white reflections so the brightness need to be increased in the diffuse often 1-50 as the brightness relates to the size of the window... the larger the window the higher the value usually. Bare this in mind if you are using lit appearance for spot lights as something like a 50mm spot light I need to set it's diffuse value to 0.02!
Lights if to bright can make the image appear darker as the Tone Mapping creates more differences between light and dark areas (more contrast). This it why the sun is problematic in some drawings..


Hope that makes sense so far....enjoy experimenting... 

[Jayne Hiddleston]

How do you achieve/what exactly do you mean by a single sided face Daz/Joe? How do I achieve this? I've heard you guys talk about this a few times - especially with lighting

[Daz Gizmo]

Hi Jayne
I have added a sample bedroom file with the single facet graphics as requested. all default sized at 500x500mm Vertical with arrow/pointing up/pointing down/Vertical Circle with arrow. I added the arrow parts as we would not be able to select them in plan view and to know which way they fire the light... 

Download and unzip the folder from the KFF dropbox - located in Sketchup Models/Single Facet Lit Appearance objects/Single facet light models.zip.

Once unzipped drag all the *.skp and *.xml files into your ArtiCAD/Sketchup folder.

Anyone struggling and cannot get access to the folder in the KFF file exchange PM me.

When you open the example *.bed file the plan should like this below:



Rendered:

[Chris]

 the larger the window the higher the value usually. Bare this in mind if you are using lit appearance for spot lights as something like a 50mm spot light I need to set it's diffuse value to 0.02!
Lights if to bright can make the image appear darker as the Tone Mapping creates more differences between light and dark areas (more contrast). This it why the sun is problematic in some drawings..


Hope that makes sense so far....enjoy experimenting... 

That makes a lot of sense and has made me rethink all my lighting completely!

I activated the Advanced Reflections option and that lets me pick a colour, however, the 'change' button has no effect - doesn't open a texture select dialogue or anything. I tried guessing what the line might be in the .mat file but I didn't get anywhere with that.

Cheers for the welcome

[Daz Gizmo]

Chris

The default Change button should bring up the RGB colour picker. We have to tick the texture box to use an image for reflections:

[Joe Laughlin]

Chris

The default Change button should bring up the RGB colour picker. We have to tick the texture box to use an image for reflections:

Daz,

when i go to tick the texture box nothing happens, it won't let me pick a texture. Any ideas?